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Adventures in WhatsApp DB – extracting messages from backups, with code examples
Getting your messages without giving a third party your credentials and data
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,335 posts.
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Open source firmware is important for security
Why open source firmware is important for security.
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Cybersecurity Checklist for Political Campaigns
Short-lived political campaigns rarely build formal security programs and often assume they're too small to attract serious attackers, but campaigns across the United States have been targeted by document theft and credential phishing. Six observed attacker tactics map to a short list of defensive priorities, starting…
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Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
See the ad for ebay at the top of the results? Not particularly interesting, right?…
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Modeling Adversaries with TLA+
A common question I get about specs is how to model bad actors. Usually this is one of two contexts: The spec involves several interacting agents sharing a protocol, but some of the nodes are faulty or malicious: they will intentionally try to subvert the system. The spec involves an agent subject to outside forces…
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Android App Reverse Engineering 101
Learn to reverse engineer Android applications!
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Writing Exploit-Resistant Code with OpenBSD
On April 27, 2019, I gave a talk on how to use OpenBSD to write better software at CarolinaCon 15 in Charlotte.
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Remote Code Execution on Most Dell Computers
What computer do you use? Who made it? Have you ever thought about what came with your computer? When we think of Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in mass, we might think of vulnerabilities in the operating system, but another attack vector to consider is "What third-party software came with
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So You Want to Be a Penetration Tester?
This is an old and outdated version of the blog. If you haven’t read this post yet, then please see the new one for the most up-to-date content: “So You Want To Work in Cyber Security?”. This version is kept here for archival purposes only.
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The inception bar: a new phishing method
A new phishing technique that displays a fake URL bar in Chrome for mobile. A key innovation is the "scroll jail" that traps the user in a fake browser.
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Setting Up an Ad-Blocking VPN with WireGuard and Pihole
This guide will walk you through the setup of a remote machine that will act as a personal VPN server at the cost of 3 to 5 USD per month. We will also configure it to act as a DNS resolver that will automatically block spam, tracking, advertising and malware domains on all of your connected devices.
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Modern C++ Won't Save Us
I’m a frequent critic of memory unsafe languages, principally C and C++, and how they induce an exceptional number of security vulnerabilities. My conclusion, based on reviewing evidence from numerous large software projects using C and C++, is that we need to be migrating our industry to memory safe by default…
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Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
Update (May 15, 2019): This post was linked and its author quoted as a source in this Fast Company article on the same subject. Where's my webcam's off switch? Have you ever noticed that your webcam doesn't have an "off" switch? I looked on Amazon, and I couldn't find any webcams for sale that
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How to Track Your Kids (and Other People's Kids) with the TicTocTrack Watch
Do you ever hear those stories from your parents along the lines of "when I was young..." and then there's a tale of how risky life was back then compared to today. You know, stuff like having to walk themselves to school without adult supervision, crazy stuff like that
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How Not to Acknowledge a Data Breach
I’m not a huge fan of stories about stories, or those that explore the ins and outs of reporting a breach. But occasionally I feel obligated to publish such accounts when companies respond to a breach report in such a way that it’s crystal clear they wouldn’t know what to do with a data breach if it bit them in the…
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Let’s Encrypt to transition to ISRG root
Let's Encrypt have announced that on July 8th, 2019 they will begin issuing new certificates from their own intermediate CA and not their current cross-signed intermediate. Here's what that means and what action, if any, site operators need to take…
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Adventures in reverse engineering Broadcom NIC firmware
For some time now, I've been reverse engineering the firmware of the Broadcom BCM5719 Ethernet NIC chip, so that open source firmware can be produced for it. The BCM5719 is a PCIe chip which provides up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports, and is mainly intended for use in server applications. It can be used with the Linux…
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Time protection: the missing OS abstraction
Time protection: the missing OS abstraction Ge et al., EuroSys’19 Ever since the prominent emergence of timing-based microarchitectural attacks (e.g. Spectre, Meltdown, and friends) I’ve been…
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Breach at IT Outsourcing Giant Wipro
Indian information technology (IT) outsourcing and consulting giant Wipro Ltd. [ NYSE:WIT ] is investigating reports that its own IT systems have been hacked and are being used to launch attacks against some of the company’s customers, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. Wipro has refused to respond to questions…
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Adblock Plus filter lists may execute arbitrary code in web pages
A new version of Adblock Plus was released on July 17, 2018. Version 3.2 introduced a new filter option for rewriting requests. A day later AdBlock followed suit and released support for the new filter option. uBlock, being owned by AdBlock, also implemented the feature. Under certain conditions the $rewrite filter…
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China Spying on Undersea Internet Cables
Supply chain security is an insurmountably hard problem. The recent focus is on Chinese 5G equipment, but the problem is much broader. This opinion piece looks at undersea communications cables: But now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally…
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‘Land Lordz’ Service Powers Airbnb Scams
Scammers who make a living swindling Airbnb.com customers have a powerful new tool at their disposal: A software-as-a-service offering called “ Land Lordz ,” which helps automate the creation and management of fake Airbnb Web sites and the sending of messages to advertise the fraudulent listings.
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Characterizing secret leakage in public GitHub repositories
How bad can it git? Characterizing secret leakage in public GitHub repositories Meli et al., NDSS’19 On the one hand you might say there’s no new news here. We know that developers shouldn’t …
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VPN – Very Precarious Narrative
A very long article about commercial VPNs, their marketing strategies, and the truth behind their privacy and security claims.
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How to increase your chances of finding a hidden camera
Take note of the title of this blog. What you read below will give you some additional knowledge that may help you identify a hidden camera but it certainly won’t guarantee that. We got lucky…
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Ginseng: Keeping secrets in registers when you distrust the operating system
Ginseng: keeping secrets in registers when you distrust the operating system Yun & Zhong et al., NDSS’19 Suppose you did go to the extreme length of establishing an unconditional root of …
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Should you be concerned about LastPass uploading your passwords to its server?
The answer to this question is still "Yes!" Here I demonstrate yet another way for the server to access your data, the issues being structural.
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Privacy Is Just the First Step, the Goal Is Data Ownership
Privacy for privacy sake is a weak argument, and privacy advocates should abandon it.
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Jerks on the Internet: what my first DDoS taught me
Ambitious software engineer